How I Spent My Summer Vacation: Now a Major Motionless Book

Yes, the pages of your life can now be brought together for everyone to see, and they can get the picture digitally at selected Web sites or in the more familiar printed scrapbook form.Credit
Photographs by Lars Klove for The New York Times

I COME from a family that has a somewhat odd relationship with technology. My father, for instance, refused to give up his manual typewriter when newfangled electric typewriters came onto the market. But now his computer system has more bells and whistles than mine.

While I’m no Luddite, neither am I exactly cutting-edge. That is why, as with many people who have made the switch to a digital camera over the last several years, I have been somewhat at a loss over what to do with the images.

My inclination has been to treat them like a digital version of film: simply print them out and stick them in a photo album. A few years ago, we bought a pint-size printer dock that prints one photo at a time.

It’s fairly time-consuming and not very cost-efficient, once paper and ink are taken into consideration, but I like printing the occasional photo. Most of the digitized images, however, first sat in the camera and then on our computer.

A year later, I was ready to try it myself and went to Shutterfly.com, a site Tim used, and took the plunge.

I was surprised how easy it was; this was a case where the Web site really did walk me through the process step by step.

Once I uploaded the photos from my computer — a simple and quick task that is similar on almost every photo site — I was given a choice of album size; cover (cloth, satin, suede or leather); page background; borders; print font for captions; and layout.

Hey, this was fun!

Until I accidentally deleted the last few pages. And had to rearrange the photos yet again. I directed a few choice words at the computer.

But the process was surprisingly straightforward. And when the album arrived, I was delighted. At a cost of about $35, including shipping for a 26-page book, it looked sleek and colorful, with our vacation tidily tucked between its blue covers. And it impressed my (apparently easily impressed) friends to no end.

Printed on archival paper, it should last at least 70 years before fading; long after, I’m sure, the entire vacation is wiped from my memory.

Because I had simply fallen into Shutterfly, however, I decided I should see what the many other online sites have to offer.

For Mac users, there is also iPhoto, which is part of its iLife ’06 package. IPhoto costs $79 for an individual plan and $99 for a family plan, which installs on up to five Macs. It allows Mac users to do much of what can be done on online photo sites, as well as store up to 250,000 digital photos.

Each photo site has specialties: some cater more to professionals; some to amateurs; some charge an annual fee; some offer services, like free storage, but are loaded with advertisements.

But side-by-side comparisons are difficult because perks are constantly changing.

“Every time one brings out one feature, the others have to respond,” said Ted Fisher, digital adviser at the New York Institute of Photography. “They seem to keep leapfrogging each other.”

For instance, Mr. Fisher said, one site may allow you to do some photo cropping online, then others will follow suit. One will offer a huge amount of free storage for photos; another will counter with unlimited space.

“There’s a lot of pressure to build up a big client base, then push for a subscription,” he said.

Linda Roeder, who researches personal Web sites for About.com (which is owned by The New York Times Company), said there are key features to look for when shopping for an online store.

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It has no maximum storage amount, although it urges customers to keep image file sizes to less than 10 megabytes. It also promises not to delete the photos, although it “reserves the right to modify the policy if necessary.”

Kodakgallery, on the other hand, which Ms. Roeder said she used, also provides free unlimited storage, but will keep your images only as long as you make a purchase once every 12 months.

That means you can buy a single print to reactivate your account, which keeps it running for another 12 months. But you have to remember to do it.

Some people don’t realize their photos can be deleted, and Ms. Roeder said she had a batch of photos disappear before she caught on to the policy.

“I’m not the only one,” she said. “A lot of people have contacted me. One woman said her wedding photos were deleted.”

Which leads us to backup.

See if your site offers backup DVDs. For example, they are available at smugmug.com, a site that wins high praise, but unlike many, charges, starting at $39.95 annually.

Again, checking back with Shutterfly, after a little hunting around and, finally a call to the help line, it turns out it sells what it calls archive CDs, which are backups, starting at $9.99 for 1 to 50 photos up to $39.99 for 201 to 1,000 photos.

And, of course, you can also burn your own CD.

If you are e-mailing photo albums online, you might want to check out such features as how long a description you can write of each photo. Ms. Roeder said she liked Kodakgallery because it allowed her to write in-depth captions, so “it’s like writing a blog, and when you flip through the photos, it’s like reading a story.”

If you are going to order a huge number of prints, it is a good idea to first buy a few to inspect the quality. Ms. Roeder said she bought a few from one site that were grainy and off-center.

Popular Photography and Imaging magazine urges wariness when ordering prints larger than 8 by 10; only 3 of the 10 sites reviewed in its May 2006 issue did an “outstanding job” with posters at 16 inches by 20 inches.

Security is another big concern, and most sites now ensure that your photos can be password-protected if you want only friends and family to see your latest vacation antics.

Some sites, however, cater to public viewing. Flickr.com, for example, not only offers the usual storage and sorting of photos, but provides an online community where people can share their favorite photos of, say, flowers, or San Francisco or Halloween.

This social aspect will be the next big leap in photography, Mr. Fisher predicted.

“A lot of people are right now pulling cameras out of their boxes that they got for the holidays,” he said. “They’re the wave of people right in the middle of the crowd. They’ve now accepted digital as a valuable thing. I think for many it will develop as their hobby or social interest as music once was — as their creative outlet.”

While I have never been an arts and crafts sort of person, I do know this is something I’m finding fun — and solving several problems at once. Organization. Gifts. Saving money. (Once you take into account what it used to cost to print and buy albums, the digital alternatives are comparable, while posting slide shows and sending online albums are often free.)

I took pictures at a friend’s 50th-birthday party and presented her with a satin-covered photo book to commemorate the event.

As we speak, duplicate albums of my parents’ 50th wedding anniversary celebration are winging their way to various family members.

And why stop at recent past events? For Hanukkah, my neighbor received from his sister a hard-copy book of photographs of his 1969 bar mitzvah that she had made from slides. You can scan the photos or slides yourself and create a book with the right software or send them to sites like blurb.com or digmypics.com that will do it for you

That sent me looking back at photos from my distant past. Graduations, birthdays — and my ancient prom photo in a midnight blue dress.

Well, maybe some pictures deserve to fade into oblivion.

E-mail: shortcuts@nytimes.com

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page C5 of the New York edition with the headline: How I Spent My Summer Vacation: Now a Major Motionless Book. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe